Concentration is not only for Yogis. Yogis are practicing concentration, but there is importance of concentration in day-to-day life. It is one of the important factor that affect success of life. Every vocation requires concentration to be successful. It is not easy, but it can be achieved by regular practice.
Importance of Concentration in Vocations
Concentration is a requirement of success in vocation. Consider different vocations as an example here. Consider the case of a Goldsmith, if he loses concentration while preparing ornaments the design and sometimes whole ornament will be destroyed. Likewise, a barber, blacksmith, driver, carpenters, weaver, etc. all requires concentration while doing work. If they loss concentration it can lead to accidents, damages, injuries, etc. in life. So there is no doubt that all work require concentration.
Do you think playing doesn’t require concentration? If you want to win a game, concentration is required. If you lose your concentration while playing, you will be in the losing side. Some team games are such that if one lose concentration, the team ends up in losing the game. Like in football, if a goalkeeper loses his concentration, you know what will happen. Why the bowler do some word exchange with the batsman while playing? It is to disturb his concentration. All games required concentration. You can easily identifies the importance of concentration in other games and athletics like volleyball, chess, caroms, hockey, running, throwing, jumping, etc.
Importance of Concentration in Studies
It is undoubtedly clear that effective studies requires concentration. You can study for long time, but study become effective only if you can concentrate on the subject you are studying. Control of mind is essential for studies. There are many methods by which you can improve the concentration, which is explained in another article. If you lack concentration in your studies, you need to identify the reasons for lack of concentration first.
Power of Concentration
Swami Vivekananda said, a concentrated mind is really a search light. It shows the power of concentration. A search light can unveil the hidden secrets. It can lead you to identify the objects which is in dark corners. It can also show light on something that is far away.
Consider a common example, if sunlight is concentrated to a point by the use of convex lens, it can burn something by creating fire. That is the power of concentration. Thus if the mind can be concentrated, enormous amount of energy can be concentrated and the result will be awesome.
Thus if one can concentrate his mind or control his mind, great goals can be achieved, otherwise sometimes ordinary things become impossible.
Ability and Object of Concentrate
What should be the object of concentration? The answer is, there is no specific object of concentration and thus the objective. It is different for different people. A student can make the object as lessons and objective as study, a yogi can make the object as God and Atman and objective as spiritual enhancement. Thus each person can choose their own object and objective for concentration.
Ability of concentration is also varies from person to person and object to object. A story of carpenter’s son was like this. The carpenter’s son have to drop the school because he was very poor in mathematics at school. After dropping from school he joined with his father in the work. After some years, school required some maintenance in the roof. Mathematics teacher, who is in charge ask the carpenter to repair it. Due the unavailability of time, he send his son for the repair work. Son examined it and gave all the requirements and measurements in numbers with calculations to the teacher. The teacher amazingly look at his mathematical ability.
In this story, he may not be able to study or concentrate on mathematics as a lesson or theory, the approach and concentration object changes his ability to learn something.